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Disaster and Realism: Novels of the 1943 Bengal Famine

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Postcolonial Modernity and the Indian Novel

Part of the book series: New Comparisons in World Literature ((NCWL))

Abstract

The 1943 Bengal famine was caused by a long-term agrarian crisis, aggravated by the conditions of the Second World War and the rise of speculative capitalism (black-marketing and hoarding). The famine led to wide food crisis conditions in late-colonial and postcolonial Bengal and gave birth to a rich literary-artistic culture. Many of these literary works, especially novels, have been criticised for their weak structure and unconventional style. This chapter first makes a theoretical framework for reading disaster and literary form, or rather famine and realism in this context. Then it elucidates the theoretical readings with examples from two novels. Bhabani Bhattacharya’s So Many Hungers! (1947) was written immediately after the famine and in the context of India’s decolonisation. The novel, the chapter argues, uses an analytical-affective mode within realism wherein it not only analyses the historical reasons responsible for the famine but also situates the affective aspects (the social and gender violence) in an ethnographic/journalistic style. These are then combined with nationalist-utopian dreams in the postcolonial period. Amalendu Chakraborty’s Ākāler Sandhāne (In Search of Famine, 1982) is set in postcolonial Bengal. The novel shows how modernisation programmes have been averse to the social conditions of starvation and malnutrition in rural Bengal which are a consequence of the long-term agrarian crisis and the 1943 famine conditions. In order to represent these conditions, Chakraborty uses a metafictional mode: about a film on the famine set in a remote village severely affected by the famine. Through the film-making project, Chakraborty is able to bring to focus the complex questions of commitment in politics and aesthetics, of modernity and rurality, and of colonial disaster and postcolonial slow violence.

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  1. School of Critical Studies, University of Glasgow, Glasgow, UK

    Sourit Bhattacharya

  2. School of Critical Studies, University Gardens, Glasgow, UK

    Sourit Bhattacharya

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Bhattacharya, S. (2020). Disaster and Realism: Novels of the 1943 Bengal Famine. In: Postcolonial Modernity and the Indian Novel. New Comparisons in World Literature. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-37397-9_2

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